‘One of the Cleverest Volumes of Fabricated Travels Ever Produced’
DAMBERGER, Christian Frederick.
Travels in the interior of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco, from the years 1781 to 1797; through Caffraria, the kingdoms of Mataman, Angola, Massi, Monoemugi, Muschako, &c. Likewise across the great desert of Sahara, and the northern parts of Barbary. Translated from the German ... London, G. Woodfall for T.N. Longman, O. Rees, J. Cuthell, and C. Geisweiler, 1801.
2 vols in 1, 8vo, pp. xvi, 222, with hand-coloured frontispiece and folding map; [2], 299, [5 (advertisements)], with 2 hand-coloured plates; small marginal tears to vol. 2 pp. 61 and 229, occasional spots and light marks; very good in contemporary half sheep, marbled boards, red morocco lettering-piece to spine; spine rubbed, some wear to corners; book label ‘Fasque'.
Added to your basket:
Travels in the interior of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco, from the years 1781 to 1797; through Caffraria, the kingdoms of Mataman, Angola, Massi, Monoemugi, Muschako, &c. Likewise across the great desert of Sahara, and the northern parts of Barbary. Translated from the German ...
‘One of the cleverest volumes of fabricated travels ever produced. The details are so circumstantial, and the mixture of fact and fiction is accomplished with so much skill, that it is not uncommon to find people who do not know that the account of the travels is nothing more than a well-contrived literary deception ... The supposititious route was taken from Stellenbosch through Kaffraria and Natal, and thence through ... the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, and the Portuguese territories in West Africa ... subsequently journeying in a north-westerly direction, he passes through the Soudan and the Sahara, eventually reaching the coast of Morocco, thus performing Sharp and Grogan’s feat of traversing Africa from south to north nearly a century before these intrepid travellers ... The volume contains ... coloured illustrations which are evidently drawn from imagination’ (Mendelssohn). This edition was published in the same year as R. Phillips’s single volume first edition.
Provenance: from the library at Fasque Castle, home of Sir John Gladstone (1764-1851), father of four-time Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.
cf. Mendelssohn I p. 408.